:: OP-ED

Cantilevered designs

Shekhar Bhatia

Oct.23 : MUMBAI’s new bridge over the Arabian Sea is the city’s latest landmark. On a recent trip to the city I drove across the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, partly because I did not want to miss my flight, and partly for the experience. There was another reason: bridges fascinate me.

Modern bridges inspire awe because they are marvels of engineering. You see programmes on National Geographic and Discovery channels on how some of them were built. These are truly audacious projects. Older bridges are more about romance and history. There is another difference: modern bridges look nice from a distance; the older and historic ones need to be admired up close.

I was living in Kolkata in 1992 when the second bridge over the Hooghly, the Vidyasagar Setu, was inaugurated. Like Mumbai’s Sea Link it’s a cable bridge. For Kolkatans, it was their Golden Gate. They had waited for the bridge that linked Howrah to Kolkata for 14 long years. On a bandh day, when there was no traffic on the streets, I went up and down the bridge on a bicycle. It was raining, the river was in high tide and the view from the top was stunning.

Further upstream, the old Howrah Bridge, built by the British in 1943 and said to be the finest example of a cantilever bridge, looked jaded in comparison. I have some unpleasant memories of Howrah Bridge when I had to abandon my cab and walk because of the traffic jam. In those days everyone I knew had a narrowly-missed-the-train-because-of-the-jam story.

Bridges define a city; they become its signature theme, the picture-postcard landmark. The Golden Gate in San Francisco is the world’s most famous suspension bridge. Compared with the sleek cable bridges of today — the Erasmus in Rotterdam or the double-decker Tsing Ma in Hong Kong — the Golden Gate looks heavy. But it’s an unfair comparison considering that it was built 70 years ago.

I prefer the view from the other famous suspension bridge — the Brooklyn Bridge in New York built nearly 50 years before the San Francisco landmark. It’s a lovely stroll if the weather is nice, and you get a stunning view of the Manhattan skyline. I love the design of the pedestrian-only Millennium Bridge between Tate Modern and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. It is subtle; doesn’t jut out. The suspension bridge was built in only three years, though it was soon shut down because it wobbled.

One of the most memorable bridges I have seen is what they call a zigzag bridge. It’s in the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou, China. The low, wooden bridge zigzags over a pond and offers a panoramic view of a classic Chinese garden. It’s all the more charming because zigzag bridges were built to block the entry of evil spirits who, it is believed, could travel only in straight lines.

I have some nice memories of old bridges because of something I saw or experienced. I remember Pont d’lena in Paris because I have family photographs with the Eiffel Tower in the background; the Pont de Arts because of the jazz musicians, the view of Notre Dame and the print I bought from one of the stalls. It’s quite like the Charles Bridge in Prague. At the Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal in Venice we bought some glass artefacts.

I have not seen the modern Millau Viaduct designed by the legendary British architect Sir Norman Foster (it’s the world’s tallest vehicular bridge), or the ancient Pont du Gard, an aqueduct built by the Romans. Both these beauties are in south of France. Cable bridges — whether in Mumbai, Boston or Hong Kong — may vary in dimension but they look nearly the same. At night, Mumbai’s Sea Link looks like a diamond with its tip emerging from the ocean, and if you are not familiar with the city, it could be anywhere in the world.

Before the bridge came up, it took nearly three quarters of an hour to travel a distance of about 8 km from Worli to Mahim causeway during peak traffic hours; it now takes just 10 minutes, costs Rs 50 one-way over the 5.6-km-long bridge. It bypasses the stench of Mahim causeway during low tide. What I missed, however, was a stop at the bakery near Mahim after Shivaji Park from where I always pick up the city’s famous pao and khari biscuit that I grew up on.

The Sea Link has been a bone of contention between political parties in the recent elections. Its foundation stone was laid some 10 years ago by Bal Thackeray when the Shiv Sena shared power in the state. The Congress Party inaugurated it, named it after Rajiv Gandhi, and also promised to extend it to Nariman Point. But if this bridge took 10 years, no one believes it will happen soon. In the next three years Delhi will have a cable bridge at Wazirabad over the Yamuna. They say it will be India’s first "signature bridge" — a fancier version of cable bridges — and the new symbol of Delhi. I wonder if, over the years, the Sea Link will replace the Gateway of India as Mumbai’s most famous landmark.

Shekhar Bhatia can be contacted at shekhar.bhatia@gmail.com